Equipment Analysis: The Remote Control - Text 7
This omnipotence altered our relations not only with the small screen, but also with the large screen. Having instituted “viewing circumstances of a different kind,” the TV remote became one of the viewing systems which put an end to the “experience imposed on a captive audience in the darkened movie theatre."[9] By offering each person the opportunity to modulate his or her experience, it contributed to cinema’s demystification and loss of aura; according to the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, this art form literally died on 31 September 1983, the date the remote control took over the public’s living rooms.[10] To adopt the less alarmist terminology of Gaudreault, it contributed to the “third birth of cinema.”
As Caetlin Benson-Allott remarks, “objects reflect the culture that produces them, and they also influence that culture.”[11] Contemporary remote controls, for their part, reflect the preponderant role granted to the spectator, who has become a spectactor[12] (spectator and actor). Their power over audiovisual content is facilitated and encouraged by a variety of functions (control over live broadcasts, participation in surveys and games).”[13]
Like audiences, which today “find themselves on the level of tele-action,”[14] the remote control has changed considerably over the past seventy years. Its interface has altered (it can be tactile and vocal), as have the buttons it displays (rapid access to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, YouTube). The addition of these shortcuts to the platforms dominating the audiovisual entertainment industry gives material form to the transformation of television and of the modes and supports of its consumption. It is certain that the transformations yet to come will modify the remote control archetype yet again.
